NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya’s High Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition seeking to legalize the use of cannabis by Rastafarians for religious purposes.
Justice Bahati Mwamuye said Kenya’s laws prohibiting the cultivation and use of marijuana do not violate Rastafarians’ right to freedom of religion. Granting the community an exemption would require a sound constitutional and legal foundation, he added.
Mwamuye, however, said Kenya should hold a national debate on its drug policy.
“This is not just a question for the Rastafari community but one that cuts across society,” he said.
Kenya’s Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act prohibits the cultivation, possession and use of marijuana. Rastafarians had petitioned the court to exempt them from the law, arguing that cannabis is central to their religious practices.
Smoking marijuana is punishable by a fine of up to $2,000, imprisonment for up to 10 years, or both. Drug trafficking carries stiffer penalties, including higher fines and longer prison terms.
In his ruling, Mwamuye said the petitioners had failed to establish the constitutional and legal basis necessary for the court to exempt them from the provisions of the drugs act.
The petitioners’ lawyer, Shadrack Wambui, said they would appeal the decision in the Court of Appeal.
Following the ruling, Rastafarians gathered at Nairobi’s Freedom Corner, where they chanted, beat drums and smoked marijuana in protest.
Wanjiru Gakiu, 60, who has practiced Rastafarianism for 34 years, said she was “disappointed” by the ruling and described Kenya’s drug laws as “satanic.”
“I’m sure if we were seeking to legalize something satanic, we would have been allowed. But when it comes to religion, the country is deaf and doesn’t want us to enjoy our religious rights,” she told The Associated Press.
Some Kenyans hope marijuana will not be legalized citing other religions practiced in the country.
“I am very happy about it (the judgment) because, as a Christian, I wouldn’t advocate for use of marijuana in our country,” said Nairobi resident Jedidah Ng’ang’a.
Rastafarians gather outside Milimani Law Courts, after the high court dismisses a Rastafarian case seeking to legalize marijuana, in Nairobi, Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
A Rastafarian smokes as they gather outside Milimani Law Courts, after the high court dismisses Rastafarian case seeking to legalize marijuana, in Nairobi, Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
A Rastafarian smokes as they gather outside Milimani Law Courts, after the high court dismisses a Rastafarian case seeking to legalize marijuana, in Nairobi, Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency should continue vehicle stops after recent fatal shootings, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, seeming to oppose a new suspension of the practice used as part of his immigration crackdown.
ICE is “doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done,” Trump wrote on his social media site.
The Republican president said that to remove criminals he claims were let into the country under the previous Democratic administration “we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump said, “Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”
Trump administration officials have told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to suspend most vehicle stops after two deadly shootings within a week, people familiar with the decision said Tuesday.
The suspension was ordered after an ICE officer shot and killed a Colombian driver Monday in Maine and a week after another officer shot and killed a motorist in Houston, renewing criticism of the agency’s enforcement tactics that were widely condemned last winter after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota.
In Florida on Tuesday, a third man in roughly a week died during an encounter with immigration officers. This time, a 28-year-old man was killed after he was hit by a tractor trailer while running from immigration and other federal officers, authorities said.
It’s a narrative that has been repeated again and again since the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown began, with federal officers confronting drivers and then saying they opened fire when the drivers' vehicles became a danger. That’s despite decades of warnings from policing experts that shooting into moving cars presents a danger of its own and should almost always be avoided.
At least 10 people have been killed during immigration operations since the start of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. At least four of those deaths involved people in vehicles, including the one last week in Houston, a trend so troubling that U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Tuesday that she had urged Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin “to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”
John Sandweg, who was acting director at ICE, which is part of DHS, during President Barack Obama's Democratic administration, estimated recently that there have been roughly 18 traffic stop shootings during the Trump immigration crackdown.
The office of Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, was told by DHS that ICE was suspending traffic stops, office spokesperson Matthew Felling said.
ICE, which has been under pressure to beef up arrest and deportation numbers, often says people it's trying to arrest are increasingly resistant to leaving their homes. ICE officers blame immigration advocates who advise immigrants to stay in their homes unless ICE produces a warrant signed by an independent judge instead of the administrative warrants the agency generally uses that are signed by another ICE officer. So, ICE officers say, they’re forced to find other areas in which to make arrests.
Hundreds of people in Maine protested Tuesday over the fatal shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national. Advocacy groups said Guerrero, who had a wife and a young daughter, was authorized to work in the United States.
DHS said Monday that an officer, “fearing for public safety,” shot and killed Durán Guerrero while officers were watching the home of someone they believed was in the U.S. illegally and facing a final order of removal from the country. It said in a post on X that when ICE tried to stop a car driven by someone who came from the home, the person attempted to flee in the vehicle and the officer fired.
That was a shift from how King earlier described the encounter, when he said Mullin told him the officer opened fire after the man tried to use his vehicle as a weapon. King said Mullin told him the officers were trying to serve an arrest warrant but not for the man who was shot.
In a scathing post on X, outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the shooting a targeted killing “at the hands of the U.S. government.”
Petro, who has openly quarreled with Trump, urged Trump to provide an explanation and accused ICE officers of treating Durán Guerrero as “an inferior being without rights.”
In Wednesday's social media post, Trump told ICE to be “judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job.”
Maine’s congressional delegation on Tuesday demanded a “comprehensive, transparent, and expedited investigation.”
Photos showed bullet holes in Durán Guerrero’s car windshield, but the officers involved in the shooting didn’t have body cameras, leaving many questions. Among them are how close the officer was to the vehicle when shooting, whether officers told Durán Guerrero to stop and why ICE believes he had put the public in danger.
Border czar Tom Homan told reporters Tuesday that the investigation needs to play out and that officers will be held accountable if they are found to have acted inappropriately or illegally.
Maine’s attorney general’s office, which said it is working with federal agencies to investigate, said initial statements suggest the driver was trying to flee in the direction of the officer, whose name hasn’t been released and who was placed on leave.
Collins said Mullin told her the DHS inspector general is investigating in cooperation with the FBI.
Democrats seeking to unseat Collins in November have sought to connect her with ICE’s methods, which have drawn public scrutiny and derision. Collins later said in a statement that although ICE needs to improve, eliminating the agency would make the nation less safe.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who is vying for Collins’ seat, called the ICE officers at the shooting “thugs” during a vigil Tuesday in Lewiston.
President Donald Trump speaks as he meets with Iraq's Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, July 14, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
